I have been looking at trend and patterns of health and illness of different social groups. Some factors that could affect this are gender, social, geographical location, ethnicity and age. I have used several statistical sources to find out if social class does affect health and illness. The world health organisation states “a state of complete health physical, metal and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Social class is an informal ranicing of people, based on their income, occupation, education, dwelling and other factors. This may be referred to as a socio – conic backgrounds. Morality (death) and morbidity (sickness) vary greatly among different social class. Social class factors that cause inequalities are income, occupation, education and environment.
Cultural or behavioural
This explanation looked at the behaviour and lifestyle choices of people in the lower social classes. It appeared lower social class smoked more, drank more alcohol, take less exercise and eat more junk food. Poor lifestyle choices were linked to a range of chronic – illnesses, heart disease, cancer, diabetics and bronchitis. Personally I think that the message people have about alcohol, smoking and drugs is that they do it to look cool in front of their friends or that they have been peered pressured into it especially with alcohol. Only 65 per cent of people actually drink alcohol and smoke to be more socially with friends. the people who drink 60 per cent of them say they drink because it gives them a buzz but the people who do not drink or smoke say they do it because their pressured into it by their friends. at the moment the trend is that most people drink alcohol, smoke and take drugs so that they look cool in front of their friends. What people don’t realise is that getting ‘drunk’ regularly can have potentially serious physical, social and academic effects. It is estimated that each year around 207,000 children in the UK start smoking and Children who live with parents or siblings who smoke are up to 3 times more likely to become smokers themselves than children of non-smoking households. It is also estimated that, each year at least 23,000 young people in England and Wales start smoking by the age of 15 as a result of exposure to smoking in the home. People who start doing drugs will come addicted straight away same as smoking really. There was a survey that took place in France and these are the important results that they found out:

* Alcohol, cigarette and cannabis were by far the substances mostly preferred by the 17 year olds in 2011. * Between 2008 and 2011, the use of cannabis has been significantly reducing, as opposed to the use of alcohol and cigarettes, which has been following an increasing pattern. More particularly, while the regular use of alcohol among the 17 year old young French reached the figure of 10,5% in 2011 compared to the figure of 8,9% in 2008, the use of cannabis decreased from 42,2% in 2008 to 41,5% in 2011. * The use of cigarettes raised significantly from 28, 9 % in 2008 to 31,5% in 2011 .

It is clear that French people, including young people, are massively addicted to alcohol. As the survey revealed, the use of alcohol exceeded the use of any other addictive substance. Alcoholism has become a very common phenomenon between adolescents, especially manifest in their social gatherings, parties and outings. Drinking alcohol in France is in the heart of experiencing joy, youth and unconcern. It is a necessity for having fun. Finally, as far as smoking was concerned, what the survey of the French Observatory revealed was that it is important to rethink the smoking laws, and focus on the prevention of smoking through special strategies and information for young people. What was particularly strange was that while the cigarette prices have been deliberately increasing the last years, as part of the government’s strategy to reduce their consumption by the young population, the use of cigarettes increased in 2011, instead of the predictable result of decrease.

As the graph shows it is clear that the class that are more likely are the people that were born in 1992. Higher class people would get the best jobs with great pay where lower class would have non-manual jobs with rubbish money, the difference between lower class and higher class is basically income, by that I mean Working class (lower class, labouring class) includes those employed in lower tier jobs as measured by skill, education and lower incomes, which also extends to those in unemployment or otherwise having below-average income, usually those in physical or manual labour, and who rent where the higher class are the wealthiest and wield the greatest political power, generally the top 1-2% of the population. They generally do not depend on wages or salary or any employment; but have enormous amounts of money in investment, money management, nobility, heirs to fortune, venture capitalists, stockbrokers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, etc.I found that the overall trend shows 30% that non-manual workers would smoke heavily, but when the prices were going up the number of non – manual workers would decrease as they couldn’t afford it however manual workers could but in 2007 there was a massive drop in how many people were smoking, the reason being for that was because the “no smoking inside” law had come in so many people stopped smoking but then over the years more and more people smoke now because majority of places have now built a smoking area for people.

The government has done their best to prevent people from smoking; they have done advertisements of people showing how bad it is. They have also had people to deliver leaflets around the doors for to convince people that it is bad for them and that they will give up. There are poster around your communities like in doctor’s surgery, post offices, clubs, schools, and youth center etc.

| Managerial and professional | Intermediate | Routine and manual | Total | Women | 96 | 95 | 86 | 91 | Men | 96 | 93 | 88 | 89 | All | 96 | 94 | 87 | 90 |

Personally I think that the government has done their best to make sure that adults are aware of how many units they are drinking, like smoking they have had adverts done which show people what alcohol does to you and that it’s not good for you. You can also see posters around your community explaining what exactly alcohol does to you and how bad it is. On www.drinkingaware.co.uk it has a unit and calorie counter on there, which you can use to see how many units you have drunk and how many calories, is in each drink. If you sign up to the website you can also have things free for example a glass which you can measure how many units you’re going to be drinking, in my opinion I think this is a great thing to make people aware of how many units they are drinking.

Material or structural

Shorter life expectancy and higher infant mortality groups in social tend to have poorer health due to inequalities in wealth and income. Poverty and low income are linked to poor diet, poor housing in poor environments and more dangerous and insecure jobs. In 2011 the ONS (UK, England and Wales), NRS (Scotland) and NISRA (Northern Ireland) adopted a change in the classification of deaths in line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) new coding rules. The change results in some deaths previously coded under 'mental and behavioural disorders' now being classed as 'self-poisoning of undetermined intent' and therefore included in the suicide figures. Theoretically, this could mean that more deaths could be coded with an underlying cause of ‘event of undetermined intent’, which is included in the national definition of suicide. This change does not affect Republic of Ireland data since their definition of suicide does not include deaths where the underlying cause is of undetermined intent.
Gender
Womens life expctancy is higher than men. Infant mortality rate for boys tend to be higher than that of girls. Women have higher reports of illnesses than men. Men tend to smoke and drink more alcohol than women. Men tend to do more dangerous sports than women and men take morwe risk than women road accident.

| Overall | Male | Female | UK | 6045 | 4552 | 1493 | England | 4509 | 3415 | 1094 | Wales | 341 | 270 | 71 | Scotland | 889 | 639 | 250 | Northern ireland | 289 | 216 | 73 |

This table shows me that the highest number of suicides occurred in england for both gender, males and females. The lowest number of suicides for all peoople and males occurred in northern ireland and for females the lowest number was in wales. Only looking at the number of suicides in a nation may be misleading as to where sucide is more prevalent. This is due to difference population size so the rates per 100,000 are used to give a truer picture of where sucide is more prevalent. Across the uk you can see that male suicide rates are consistently higher than female rates and for the uk as a whole, england and scotland the male sucide rate is approximately 3 times hgher than female rates. In wales the male suicide rate is approximately 4 times higher than the female rates and in northern ireland the male suicide rate is approximately 5 times higher than the female rate.

This graph shows me the trends for male and female suicides have stayed relatively stable in the UK over the last 10 years, with some fluctuations. Since 2001, in the UK there has been an overall decrease of less than 1 per 100,000 for all persons and females; for males there has been an overall decrease of just over 1 per 100,000.The suicide rate for males in 2011 is its highest since 2002. The female rate has increased significantly since 2007. Between 2010 and 2011 there was a significant increase in the rate for all persons.

This graph shows me that in Wales, the trend for male suicides has fluctuated over the last ten years. The female rate for suicide has remained relatively unchanged, but with fluctuations. Overall for males there has been a decrease over the ten year period of less than 1 per 100,000; for all persons and females there has been an overall increase of less than 1 per 100,000. Between 2009 and 2011 the overall rate increased by 30%; the rate is at its highest since 2004.

This graph shows that, in Scotland, the trend for overall suicides follows a similar pattern to that of the UK but with more fluctuations over the last 10 years. The female rate has remained largely stable over time. Overall there has been a decrease of slightly less than 3 per 100,000 suicides over the ten year period; for males there has been a decrease of 4.6 per 100,000; for females there has been an overall decrease of less than 1 per 100,000. In additional analyses using three-year rolling averages (ScotPHO, 2012), it has been shown that between 2000-02 and 2009-11 there was a 17% fall in suicide

This graph shows me the trends for male and female suicides have stayed relatively stable in England over the last 10 years, with some fluctuations. Since 2001, in England there has been an overall decrease of less than 1 per 100,000 for all persons and females; for males there has been an overall decrease of just over 1 per 100,000. Between 2010 and 2011 the overall rate increased by 6%.

Graph 11 shows that in Northern Ireland, the trend for all persons and male suicides has fluctuated over the last ten years, but overall has shown an increase over time. The female rate for suicide has remained more stable, but also shows an overall increase. Since 2001, there has been an increase of 6.6 per 100,000 for all persons; for males there has been an increase over the ten year period of 8.3 per 100,000; for females there has been an overall increase of almost 5 per 100,000.

It is important to address the reliability of suicide statistics since these are commonly used to directly influence decisions about public policy and public health (including suicide prevention) strategies. The reliability of statistics is obviously affected by the misclassification of deaths leading to under-reporting. There are several other additional factors that need to be considered. It has been suggested that there may be inconsistencies in coroners’ processes to establish a cause of death; individual coroners may record deaths differently to others. For example, a coroner may decide not to give a statement of intent on the death registration in some situations, such as in the deaths of children, which may be out of sympathy for the family or sensitivity to the cultural/religious beliefs of a family. Differences may also arise in situations that prove difficult for the coroner to establish one cause of death; for example, when chronic illness is a factor in the death or in road accidents where there may also have been suicidal intent. Such situations leave room for interpretation and subjectivity. As well as the death registration processes being subject to interpretation and inconsistencies within a country, there are also likely to be inconsistencies between countries. To take an obvious example, there are different death registration processes across the UK nations. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that suicide statistics in one country are measuring the same phenomenon as those in another country. Reliability is affected by the multiple definitions of suicide. Silverman (2006) claims that there are more than 27 definitions of suicide used in the research literature and this adds another dimension to the problem of reliability, as suicide is defined differently by different researchers and research disciplines, and in different context and professions. For example, the clinical and legal definitions of suicide differ: within a legal definition there must be evidence that there was intent to take one’s life, whereas a clinical definition is based on a less stringent concept of proof. Therefore, there may be under-reporting where insufficient evidence of suicide (to satisfy coronial requirements) is available.
There are various positions within the research field as to the reliability of suicide statistics and how (or even if) they can be used effectively. Some researchers reject the use of official suicide statistics because their reliability is so low; others, however, argue that the statistics are in fact still reliable enough to be used to establish trends over time. It can be argued that suicide statistics have poor validity but reasonable reliability. This would mean that, even if we accept the limitations to the statistics, the data still has some temporal stability and any limiting factor would continuously be a limiting factor over time. Therefore trends could be accepted to be truer than the statistics; changes in rates and fluctuations may be valid if underreporting remains stable over time (Brugha & Walsh, 1978; Sainsbury & Jenkins, 1982). In this way, suicide statistics will still give us valuable information about suicide over time and in different groups who may be at risk. Others, however, are more sceptical about both validity and reliability of official statistics. It is also worth noting that due to the human nature of registration and reporting, and the complexity of suicidal behaviour and actions, it is inevitable that suicide statistics will never be completely reliable. It can be argued that this will always be the case (Sainsbury & Jenkins, 1982); the subjective nature of recording deaths and the differences between countries’ registration processes will forever pose a problem for any official statistics and their wider use. However, this should not be taken to suggest that we should not raise these issues and continue to do everything possible to limit these confounding factors, so that the suicide statistics are as reliable as possible. Also, fluctuations and trends should not be ignored because of the issues of under-reporting, misclassification and limited reliability. As has been mentioned in the previous sections, there are some differences in the way different countries register deaths, and therefore how deaths are classified as suicides. This potentially undermines confidence in the value of comparing suicide statistics across countries. Lower or higher rates may be an artefact of lower or higher quality (or just different) registration procedures between countries, rather than a reflection of true differences in suicide risk.

Social class and life chances
A
Class 1: | Higher managerial and professional occupations. * Large employers and high managerial occuptions * Higher professional occuptions | Class 2: | Lower managerial and professional occupations | Class 3: | Intermediate occupations | Class 4: | Small employers and own account workers. | Class 5: | Lower supervisory and technical occupations | Class 6: | Semi-routine occupations | Class 7: | Routine occupations | Class 8: | Never worked and long term unemployed. |
B
i) Professional ii) Managerial/technical iii) Skilled(non-manual) iv) Skilled (manual) v) Partly skilled vi) Unskilled

The table above shows social classes as described by the office for national statistics and the highlighted box just above shows the previous classifications. The difference between the two is that there are more classes in A which means it could be easier to class people into and also that A is much more detailed than B.

Economy
Women still earn less than men and also you find in our days now that more women are in lower paid jobs than men. What people have found out is that it’s all because boys are more competitive aged four. The researchers are unsure if the trait can be explained by nature or nurture. But, whatever the reason, they say it could help explain why women’s salaries tend to lag behind men’s. Women are more likely to be the main carer, because men get illnesses quicker and if their working in public area women have been the main carer in the daily role. A lot of people use the health and social care services to make them better but the delivery of social care services involves a range of funders and decision makers. Funding comes from a combination of central government grants, local tax revenues and user charges. Social care policy also involves a number of stakeholders. Furthermore, investment made by social services may achieve benefits that would normally be the responsibility of other parts of the health or welfare system. For example, social services investment in support for people leaving hospital could improve rates of hospital discharge and ease resource pressures on the health service. At the same time, it could increase pressure on people using services and their families. What you find in life is that lower class people have to have the free best treatment that they get offered by the NHS and if they want treatment and have to pay for it then they would have to do some fundraising for themselves for people to help towards the individual getting better where as higher class people can just pay all out for their treatment as they don’t have to worry about having enough money. Rich people will always have access to better “health care” than poor people … no matter what mechanisms you put in place and even if we can magically transport poor people to the best hospitals the instant they fall ill. The reason being for that is that there is no single good called “health care” and it is plain as day to understand that larger incomes enable folks to spend all kinds of money on goods and services that enhance the prospects of a healthier and longer life. Take a look at the data on mortality – rich people live a lot longer. People who complete a college degree live a lot longer. And there are a whole host of reasons why. Maybe the rich can afford health club memberships. Maybe the rich can afford nutritional supplements, more fresh vegetables in season, warmer clothes in winter, better antibacterial soaps and cleaners, cleaner homes, homes in cleaner cities, water purification systems, exercise gurus, workout videos and equipment, more musical instruments to help them relax, and so on for the myriad things that contribute to better health. Further, the rich are likely to be in safer jobs and to find themselves in healthier relationships. So what does it really mean when we say, “a rich guy and poor guy should be treated the same when both appear in the emergency room with a GSW?” The fact remains that each and every day this exact situation exists and we are perfectly happy to allow the rich folks to buy better emergency surgery (we just don’t call it emergency surgery!). How would you remedy this? Stop the rich people from using health clubs? Or put a special tax on health club memberships to the rich and use it to pay for health club memberships for the poor Or do we have a TV police running around preventing poor people from spending any of their cash on televisions and iPods and the like just so that they can spend all of their free resources living a longer, yet more miserable, life? I personally think that wheather you are rich or people that you should be able to have the same treatment so therefore that would make everyones life expectancy longer. Women are more likely to live in poverty in later life as they wont have an employer pension this is because women becomes house wifes to bring up and support their kids. Women are less likely than men to have a full state pension as they have had family commitements.

Ethnic minorities in the uk
Tend to have shorter life expectancy. Tend to have higher infant mortality. Children tend to have a higher rate of rickets. They have higher rates of poverty. Language barriers may hinder access to health and social class service – translators are in shortage female may be reluctant to see a make up. England and Wales has become more ethnically diverse with rising numbers of people identifying with minority ethnic groups in 2011. Despite the White ethnic group decreasing in size, it is still the majority ethnic group that people identify with. * White was the majority ethnic group at 48.2 million in 2011 (86.0 per cent). Within this ethnic group, White British1 was the largest group at 45.1 million (80.5 per cent). * The White ethnic group accounted for 86.0 per cent of the usual resident population in 2011, a decrease from 91.3 per cent in 2001 and 94.1 per cent in 1991. * White British and White Irish decreased between 2001 and 2011. The remaining ethnic groups increased, Any Other White background had the largest increase of 1.1 million (1.8 percentage points). * Across the English regions and Wales, London was the most ethnically diverse area, and Wales the least. * 91.0 per cent of the usual resident population identified with at least one UK national identity (English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, and British) in 2011.
In recent years progress has been made in increasing the representation of black and minority-ethnic groups in many areas of public life. After the 2010 General Election there were 27 minority ethnic MPs, 12 more than in the previous Parliament. In total this equates to 4.2% of total MPs being of an ethnic minority. However Ethnic minority MPs are underrepresented when compared to the population as a whole..
Geographical variations
There are regional variations in pattern of health and ill-health. Mortailty and morbidity vary in different parts of uk and within areas of town and cities. Certain health problem vary dramatically depending on where you live.

Quality of life requires that people’s basic and social needs are met and that they have the autonomy to choose to enjoy life, to flourish and to participate as citizens in a society with high levels of civic integration, social connectivity, trust and other integrative norms including at least fairness and equity, all within a physically and socially sustainable global environment. Quality of life can be interpreted very broadly at both the individual and the community level and can be linked to concepts of happiness and subjective well-being. Many aspects of the broader social and environmental context in which people live are key factors in their well-being.

The 20 indicators cover broad areas of quality of life such as safety, housing, health, education, and transport and are available at ‘small area’ level. Small areas include electoral wards which are the units used to elect local government councillors. They constitute the lowest administrative units in the UK. There are 8,797 electoral wards in England. Small areas also include lower super output areas which have an average population of 1,500. There are 32,482 LSOAs in England. We use data for the latest available year up to 2005.

This table shows The 20 quality of life indicators at small area level.
This table shows The 20 quality of life indicators at small area level.

We see that for most quality of life indicators the majority of the variation is at the small area level although a significant proportion of the variance is also attributable to the two higher levels at which PSOs operate. For the health variables – life expectancy, mortality and long-standing illness - 98%, 94%, and 84% of the variation (respectively) is at small area level, whereas for ‘teenage conception’ it is only 49%. This suggests that PCTs and SHAs may be able to exert more influence over the latter variable than the former. Results for other variables such as ‘sleep rough’, suggest that much of the variation lies at the small area level and may be very localised and area specific; whereas for other variables such as ‘air quality’, ‘election turnout’ and the 3 measures of ‘travel’, the majority of the variation is attributable to the higher levels suggesting that at these levels PSOs may have a greater role to play in influencing outcomes on such variables. This considers the local government context. The greatest variation in most quality of life measures is at the small area level, except for the variables ‘air quality’, ‘election turnout’ and the 3 measures of ‘travel’, where the greatest variation is at LA level. In general, there is a set of indicators that tend to have a large variation at small area level, and another set for which the majority of variation appears at the higher levels.

This graph shows me the Proportion of variance in QOL indicators attribut-able to higher level SHAs, PCTs and small areas (controlling for need variables and PCT performance indicators)

This graph above shows the proportion of variation in quality of life indicators attributable to higher level LAs and small areas.
Conclusion
After all the research I have done, I have found out that there is no equality in health and illness. I think this because as I could see in my research that people had said that higher class people live longer than what lower class people would. the reasons they give for that was that if a higher class person was ill they could afford all the treatments and the best of everything in order to make them better, they also mentioned that higher class people would be seen by the doctor straight away by paying to go private, I thought this was unfair as lower class people deserve to have all the bests treatments they can have in order to make them better, there is no difference between a lower class person or a higher class person only that higher class people have a better income as I’ve found out when doing my research. I also found out that the reason why men earn more than women is because from 4 onwards boys are very competitive and want things more, another reason is because women are seen as “housewives” and mothers have children so they have to stay at home to support and be there for their child. While doing my research I also found out that in 2007, majority of higher class people stopped smoking as the law came in about not being able to smoke inside but then it raised again in 2008 as public places had built a smoking area for smokers. Both classes (high and low) drink a lot, but the government have promoted a lot to prevent people from drinking and smoking, I have found out that they have also tried to make people aware of how much units they drink and to make sure that people know how bad drink is for the body and same with smoking, how bad it is for your lungs. I have found out also while doing my research that male have a very high suicidal rate in the UK, this could be down to stress or getting into the wrong thing that they think it’s the only easy way out. When men attempt it, it's not a cry for attention...we've ultimately given up on life. Part of the reason for that can be simply a lack of social supports, mixed with higher social expectations. Another thing is that Women may be more emotional...but I don't buy that. Men are just as emotional...but the difference seems to be that women are not pressured into containing their emotions all the time. A woman can cry without being judged negatively. A woman can be angry and violent and still not be treated the same way as a man. In my opinions I think that there are more supports, refuges and exclusive females only zones, along with a society that coddles women and assails men at every turn, and it isn't too hard to understand why men are far more likely to attempt suicide to actually end their lives while women are far more likely to attempt it to get a response from people. so after all my research I believe that there is no equality in health and illness and that higher class people get treated differently to lower class people when there is no actual difference between them other than income.